EPA to dig monitoring wells around former Chem Fab site in Doylestown

Friday

The Environmental Protection Agency will take its next step to remediate the effects of the former Chem Fab firm on Broad Street in Doylestown in September.

The agency will drill a series of 21 groundwater monitoring wells around the site on the 300 block of North Broad Street in both the borough and the township beginning Sept. 9. Remedial Project Manager Huu Ngo said the wells will be used to identify the outer perimeter of any contamination in the groundwater.

Back in 1987, the EPA found the groundwater near the site to be contaminated with TCE and PCE and began delivering bottled water to nearby residents and connecting properties to public water. By 1991, the EPA moved several residential and business wells near the site to the public water system over concerns about potential contamination to their well water, according to the EPA website.

“The EPA has gone out there and addressed any potential short-term risks for folks,” he said. “(The testing is) ultimately so that we can address any long-term risks.”

Ngo said the wells should start producing samples sometime in October, and the agency will analyze them over the winter. He said they will check the water for Volatile Organic Compounds, such as trichloroethylene (TCE) and tetrachloroethylene (PCE). Once the samples are analyzed, Ngo said the EPA will develop a plan to clean the contaminated groundwater.

High levels of TCE may cause liver, kidney or lung cancer if inhaled, ingested or touched, according to theAgency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

The groundwater testing has progressed separately from efforts to clean up contamination to soil on the site itself, which was detailed at a public presentation last year.

The Chem Fab site was used as an electroplating processing facility from 1965 to 1978 and a metal processing facility from 1965 to 1994. The EPA’s remediation plan indicates that the Bucks County Department of Health and the state Department of Environmental Protection cited the factory several times for spills and release of industrial waste from above-ground storage tanks, underground storage tanks and the catch basin to Cooks Run.

After the company that owned the site closed, drug dealers began using the property as a meth lab in late 1994 or early 1995, officials said. The EPA and the FBI closed the lab in 1995 and removed more than 100 drums of hazardous substances and more than 8,000 gallons of chromic acid waste that had been left on the site.

In 2009, the EPA had the site added to the Superfund National Priorities List, a national list of sites where hazardous contaminants could impact public health or the environment, so it could take over the cleanup.